From Classroom Theory to Entrepreneurial Practice

For the first time in Guatemala, a business training program dedicated to creating leaders and entrepreneurs throughout Latin America will start operating in 1996. Programa Bolívar is a nonprofit organization founded to serve as an instrument for social and technological development, as well as regional unification efforts in order to innovate and achieve competitiveness.

"To graduate new businesses and not people" is the main goal of the one year entrepreneur program, which does not only grant a diploma after each course, but rather trains people who, by the end of the program will be able to found their own companies. The program was created at the Technological Institute of Monterrey, in Nuevo León, México, which has already graduated several two- and three-million dollar companies.

In the United States there are around 600 entrepreneur programs, about the same amount as in Europe, but in Japan, there are at least 1,300. One of the first goals the Bolívar program has set for its Guatemalan branch is to search for new ways to integrate regional trade and business activities.